Comic books have been around since the early 1930’s, and they enjoyed their ‘golden age’ from the mid 30’s until about 1950. Since then, there has been just about no innovation among the comic book industry. While there hasn’t been much to change, the industry is still going strong with over $400 million in sales each year.
In the past, there have been companies that have tried to advance the comic book industry. Some companies have tried to take comic books digital, by putting them on iPads, tablets, and the internet. All of them have found out that digital is not always the best way to go.
So this leads us to the question, “Is there a way to innovate, without changing the attitude and tradition that has driven the hobby for so long?”
One company, CoKreeate believes that they may have found the solution. They have teamed with former professional wrestler, ‘Brimstone’ (William Kucmierowski) and his comic book ‘Brimstone and The Borderhounds’ to create, what we believe is the first ever 3D printed comic book cover.
“Brimstone, a wrestler and also a great friend of ours, recently had his comic book published, explained Co Kreeate’s founder, Will Co to 3DPrint.com. “As an added bonus, we are excited to become a part of his success by creating a 3D cover for his comic book.”
‘Brimstone and The Borderhounds’ is published by Hound Comics, Inc. (Hound Entertainment Group), and is sold at Barnes & Noble, B.Dalton, Amazon, BN.com, Comixology and several other distribution outlets all around the world. The series was first launched on October 31, 2010 in Borders Books, and then re-launched in January of 2011 worldwide after the Borders stores closed down.
Cokreeate decided to 3D print issue #9, which is entitled “Extinction Theory”, which was written by Brimstone himself, with art work done by Geoffrey Gwinn, Jake Isenberg, Define Siobhan, Kevin Enhart and Shawn Reynolds.
Will Co, truly believes that 3D printing could become a norm in comic book production.
“For our long term goal, we are planning to land contracts to create limited edition comic books in the future. For the moment, we strongly believe that this will steer the comic industry toward a new revolutionary path.”
Perhaps, this new path will be one that enriches the tradition of collecting and reading comic books, rather than deadening it like previous innovative attempts. In the future, could we see special limited edition comic books released with a fully printed 3D cover? It seems like a real possibility.
CoKreeate is a company that specializes in creating 3D printed portraits and memorabilia through 3D scanning and printing. Their creations consist of custom 3D figurines, 3D printed pictures, and other various 3D art.
Co informed us that his company used a Zcorp 3D printer, that prints in sandstone to create their comic book cover, and they use an Artec Eva scanner, when creating 3D models of people.
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